As the last reviews for “Captain Mike Across America” trickle through my inbox, it always seems to be more of the same; it’s a poorly made film with bad editing decisions leading to an narcissistic and self-indulgent final product. However, this new review from Insider Online got me thinking a bit more about why Moore made this film and why he would want to release a film like this - especially when it has been received so poorly - right in the middle of his final push for “Sicko”. First, the obvious part - the review of the film itself:
The film itself is nothing spectacular – in fact, as far as tour movies go, it’s not that good. It runs at a long 102 minutes, and begins to get tedious in its delivery rather quickly. There are a few moments that break the mould (when Moore responds to Christian hecklers in the crowd at one of his talks), but for the most part there’s not a lot to take away at the end of it all. Canadians will love it, and it will open to big numbers (as do most of his projects north of the border). In the United States, where it really matters, I’d be surprised to see it get a wide release, much less succeed.
As you can clearly see… same thing; long, boring, tedious, self-indulgent. However, here’s the part that made me sit up and think for a minute:
This film is coming at such a crucial time, before the U.S. primaries that are going to be among the most hotly contested in recent memory, and right before a pivotal election in ’08. In making this film, Moore could’ve taken the opportunity to preach his ideals in a more accessible way, one that will guarantee people see this movie. Because, after all, Captain Mike is less about promoting a democrat agenda, but more about encouraging people – university students in particular – to just get out there and vote. When the 2004 election was won by less that a 5% margin, it became clear that, indeed, every vote counts.
So… is that it? Is Michael Moore attempting to categorize himself as The One Who Gets The Youth Vote Out? Does he hope that the American viewing public, in watching this film, will see him as some sort of savior to the electoral process and a champion of true democracy? Or, more interestingly, does Moore think that perhaps one of the Democratic front runners will watch his seemingly awesome power at driving the youth vote and embrace him into their campaign? If the latter is truly the case, perhaps “Captain Mike” is less of a simple vanity project than it first appeared. Will Michael Moore use this new film to try to launch himself directly into politics and a particular candidate’s campaign?
Of course, for the educated reader, the problem with this whole strategy - and, indeed, the movie itself - is that Michael Moore failed at his endeavor. His Slacker Uprising tour did *not* in fact “get the youth vote out” and his candidate, John Kerry, did not win the election. Nothing that Moore attempted, both on the tour and through his website and mailing, made any significant difference in the youth turnout of the 2004 election. In fact, some have hypothesized that Moore’s passionate appeals garnered him the exact opposite result that he had intended; his vigor promoting Kerry galvanized the right, turning out *their* vote thus sealing the election for Bush. Still, from everything I’ve read “Captain Mike” is clearly edited to show the exact opposite of all of this. In “Captain Mike”, Moore is the dashing hero, the rockstar to whom rockstars themselves flaunt, drawing enthusiastic and passionate crowds of young voters who respond to his magnetic presence with cheers of glory and promises that they will take up his gauntlet and vote for Kerry in the election. And it is this image - Moore as a rockstar, Moore as a galvanizing force, Moore as The One to whom the youth of America respond - that Moore is trying to sell to the public, and perhaps the candidates themselves. The question now becomes who will forget history and buy what Moore is selling? Will this hat-trick of a film have the effect Moore seems to desire?
I don’t know about you, but I would tend to take it as a bad omen when even the World Socialist Web Site doesn’t like Michael Moore’s new opus, “Captain Mike Across America”:
Michael Moore’s Captain Mike Across America speaks indirectly to some of the peculiarities of American political life, in fact, to the essential untenability of the two-party system. It documents Moore’s tour on behalf of Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry through a number of “swing” states in the weeks before the November 2004 election. Moore, of course, was riding high on the great success of his Fahrenheit 9/11, which had opened in late June.
The peculiarities of the new film begin with its opening titles, which criticize the Kerry campaign, faulting it for a lack of aggressiveness in response to Republican attack ads and so forth. Indeed, whether Moore has edited it out or not, as far as this spectator could determine, there was not a single verbal reference to Kerry in the remainder of the film. This is a film, in other words, from the failed school of “Anybody But Bush.”
Its politics stay at a very low level, for the most part little more than vague populist attacks on the Bush administration, which would educate and enlighten no one. The signs of a growing radicalization, however, which the Democratic Party is incapable of and hostile to seizing upon, are there in the film. Moore makes appearances in a variety of small and medium-sized cities, to enthusiastic crowds. Aside from pointing to that phenomenon, Captain Mike Across America has minimal value.
Again I say.... OUCH. With this type of response thus far, I can’t imagine this film will do well in American release. Stay tuned....
The TIFF festival has come and gone, and nearly all of the reviews of Moore newest film seem to be in. I’ve taken the latest sampling from both professional critics and personal blog accounts and collected them here for your perusal. Personally, I think the compiled end result of all these reviews is utterly fascinating.
Well, the critics continue to pan “Captain Mike” as if it were the plague itself. Honestly, I’ve seen perhaps one or two reviews that were neutral at best from the professional critics’ circle. The newest review from Variety is particularly scathing:
One could easily carve an interesting hour-long docu out of “Captain Mike Across America,” Michael Moore’s ungainly account of his “Slacker Uprising” campaign to encourage young people to vote for John Kerry—and, more importantly, against George W. Bush—during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In its current form, however, this repetitious and self-indulgent hodgepodge comes across as a nostalgia-drenched vanity project, with far too much footage of various celebs at assorted gatherings introing Moore as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Theatrical potential is slim, but grassroots circulation of DVDs might prove useful in get-out-the-vote drives for 2008.
Ouch. GreenCine Daily offers a plethora of snippets of reviews from a whole bunch of sources, saving me the trouble of quoting all of them. I highly encourage you to click the link and read through the absolutely searing reviews collected here, but here are a couple of new ones I found highly amusing:
“Why did Moore feel that this material needed to be so tediously regurgitated?” asks Ben Kenigsberg at Time Out Chicago. “Rather than inspiring his audience to action, Captain Mike does little other than call attention to the arrogance of the man who made it.”
In contrast, bloggers have been incredibly quiet about “Captain Mike” and the critics response to it. Not many seem to want to discuss the film or its reception, and those that do are still split very much down the middle, with some continuing their defensive of Moore and others panning the project. The latest round seem to be trying to put a positive spin on things, either by focusing on the good parts of the film or by diverting the subject to Moore and politics.
Michael Moore’s latest film received a standing ovation at the Ryerson Theatre last Friday.
Republicans will see his latest work as a propaganda film and some Canadians will call it a complete pile of rubbish. Democrats will love the film and see it as the truth that has been suppressed by the media. This Canadian found it very entertaining…
Love him or hate him, his films are entertaining. The audience at Ryerson couldn’t get enough of his stories. The film will have a limited theatrical release in North America according to Harvey Weinstein who was in the audience. Following that will be a DVD release which will include a lot of extra footage and a show Moore did in London shortly after 9/11. My guess is that all of this will come out next year just before the election (depending on how the Democrats are doing in the polls).
Here’s Balanced Opinions’ positive spin on both Moore and “Captain Mike” - note how quickly the discussion of the film turns into a political debate about Moore’s electoral probability:
The folk who urge a write-in vote for Gore have already picked a Vice-Presidential candidate for him - someone who has equal standing as a tribune of the people. They’ve chosen Michael Moore as his running mate.
Well - this is particularly bad timing. Captain Mike Across America has just universally been hailed as crap - I think “self-praising” and “self-infatuated” were the nicest things the TIFF reviewers could say. In the process, he jumps all over students for not having turned out to vote Bush out in 2004. Well, the so-called youth vote, “slackers” as Moore calls them, never turns out. Following and voting elections interferes with drinking and what youth voters insist on calling fucking. (So do courses; that’s why you can study video games or blogging.) There’s the other safe Gore bloc shot - students. They’d never go for Moore now.
I think it’s safe to call this one now. As it currently stands after it TIFF debut, the critical reviews are positively SCATHING. Virtually one has anything even remotely nice to say about “Captain Mike”, and I can say I haven’t seen a movie panned this badly since “Snakes on a Plane”. Interestingly, Moore’s fans are NOT coming to his defense. Very few bloggers had much to say about “Captain Mike”, and those reviews/opinions were extraordinarily mixed. Only a few were truly positive and almost no one defended him outright. It seems that only the few very faithful die-hard Moore fans liked this film, leaving the rest of the viewing populace scratching their heads wondering what the hell this film was supposed to accomplish. I would call the critical review of “Captain Mike” as 95% very against the film and the blogger/fan reaction as about 50% against the film. If there are more fans out there who liked this film, they certainly aren’t talking about it.
I am astounded at the incredible negativity surrounding this project. Moore and Weinstein promised a limited US theatrical release which may prove problematic given the incredible backlash against the film. I can’t help but wonder how Moore is feeling about these reviews. Is he taking any of this criticism seriously? Will he re-edit the film if it does come out in the US? Will he be able to brush away such harsh reactions to his work or will his anger get the best of him?
I will of course continue to report and update you all on the progress of “Captain Mike” and any further plans or reactions that occur in the future. Stay tuned… ;)
Is this the end for Michael Moore? The controversial film maker has become arguably the loudest anti-Bush voice in America, eclipsing other well known Left-wing activists such as Sean Penn and Tim Robbins with a series of movies that are almost genetically designed to make people lose faith in the American system.
But now, following on from the failure of his last film, Sicko, it seems his latest flick, Captain Mike Across America looks set to be his biggest dud yet. Captain Mike Across America sees Michael Moore making a movie about the person he loves most—Michael Moore.
Filmed a few years ago when the Michigan native embarked a nationwide college tour to impress on students how important it was to (a) hate George Bush and (b) love Michael Moore, Captain Mike Across America premiered to a half empty theatre at the Toronto Film Festival last week, leaving many observers to conclude that the darling of the film festival circuit has made one self-involved movie too many.
It would be nice to think that this is the case, and that duplicitous old fraud has finally been found out, but what is really baffling is the huge popularity he enjoyed in the first place.
Here in Ireland, Moore is virtually idolised by the Left, and it is to the their eternal shame that they adopted Moore to be their Leni Riefenstahl.
Many people first became aware of Moore through his TV show The Awful Truth and then his first feature film, Roger And Me, an apparently damning indictment of the impact of General Motors decision to relocate from a small American town to Mexico, where labour costs were cheaper.
It was like a Woody Guthrie song put to celluloid and was intensely moving. There was only one problem: he had manipulated the truth to suit himself, as well as deceiving at least one of the people who appeared—the woman who sold rabbits for food—into signing away any future royalties.
The lies and deceptions didn’t stop there.
Incredibly, he won an Oscar for Best Documentary with Bowling For Columbine, despite the fact that there were at least 56 proved inaccuracies and distortions.
When pressed, he admitted to manufacturing false footage and using fake statistics and dodgy data, but defended himself by saying that he was entertainer—an interesting defence from the winner of an Oscar for Best Documentary.
But while you could forgive Moore for his many failings, the refusal of so many people to accept the glaring evidence right in front of their eyes was damnable.
Unquestioningly bashing Bush was the order of the day, as was unquestioningly swallowing anything Moore had to say. It was a shame to see so many otherwise sensible people completely lose their critical faculties and turn any exposure of Moore’s lies into the work of some vast, right-wing conspiracy—a conspiracy theory which, inevitably, was started by Moore himself.
Now it looks like movie goers’ love affair with Moore is over. And not a moment too soon.
I just want to add a thought to all the reviews and comments on Captain Mike being posted below. First, I think this indicates that Michael Moore has graduated to a new tier of hypocritical liberal greed. There are lot of leftists out there - Mikey’s idol Noam Chomsky being a prime example - who make lots of money publishing “books” that consist almost entirely of speech transcripts and edited e-mail exchanges. Chomsky’s post-9/11 book, published a month after the towers fell and consisting almost entirely of edited e-mails, is a prime example. Peter Schweizer in Do as I Say (Not As I Do) (a fun if not exactly insightful book) called this “multilevel marketing for radicals”.
This is essentially what Michael Moore is now doing. He is making money documenting ... himself. He is repacking appearances as though it were original content. Anything to wring a few more dollars and a little more passion out of his supporters. Maybe he needs to add a new wing to his Torch Lake mansion.
(Yes, I know he leaked Sicko! over the internet so people could watch it for free as a sign of his non-greed. As James Berardinelli argued, this just proves that Mikey is a smart marketeer. The leak generated buzz and eventual riches.)
Moore’s Slacker Uprising Tour, whatever its faults, was part of a long American tradition. American satirists, from Twain to Mencken to O’Rourke, have often made a living going around just being themselves and repeating some of their more trenchant observations. Hell, I paid to hear O’Rourke in Austin a few years ago and he repeated a lot of stuff from his books. Of course, he also spent 90 minutes answering questions, signing books and entertaining the hell out the libertarian audience.
Even legitimate political figures do the tour thing. President Clinton makes millions on the speaking circuit. Ronald Reagan honed his speaking style by touring America on behalf of GE at a massive salary, giving an ever-refined version of “The Speech”, as D’Souza called it. And I’m sure more than a little money has been made, in recent years, by selling people videotapes or DVDs of appearances.
The problem here is that Moore is trying to pretend this is original content. If he sticks to the Chomsky tactic of selling the same thing over and over again to the poor masses he claims to love, he’ll do fine. But showing it to film critics at the fricking Toronto Film Festival as though it were a genuine documentary?
I had been reserving judgment about how “Captain Mike Across America” would be well and truly received until it had its public screenings. So far the only people to see the film were critics and reviewers, who, as I have discussed in previous articles, have unanimously and harshly panned Moore’s newest opus. What I wanted to know is if Moore’s diehard fans would see the same flaws and problems in “Captain Mike” that the critics did - even the critics that were self-proclaimed big fans of Michael Moore and his work. The question I wanted answered was would Moore’s fans still like and appreciate “Captain Mike” despite the critical backlash?
Today we had our first answer to that question. Doc Blog, one of the TIFF 2007 blogs, describes in detail the events that occurred at the first public screening of “Captain Mike Across America”. It was, to put it mildly, a huge and unbridled success with the fans in attendance:
Ryerson theatre was filled to capacity tonight for the premiere of Michael Moore’s latest documentary Captain Mike Across America. The crowd received Moore with the utmost admiration, as reflected by the loud applause when he entered the theatre…
Throughout the screening, the audience burst into applause and at times even motional reactions. A woman a few seats from me cried during one of Moore’s speeches about the war and the lives lost because of it. The energy in the theatre was palpable to say the least. The screening felt like an instant part of Festival lore as Harvey Weinstein was in the audience watching for the first time. This continued to the end, where Moore received a standing ovation for about 2-3 minutes. His reaction was that of the greatest appreciation. He said, “This is way above and beyond what I expected. Thank you for that very generous response.” Moore said the ovation was even longer than when he showed Bowling for Columbine here.
When asked if he would do this journey again for a future election, Moore simply answered, “I hope I don’t have to.” He went on to share how the tour was tiring but also physically dangerous. On more than one occasion, Moore’s life was endangered. His efforts will not go unnoticed when the film gets a theatrical release. You can certainly see why his actions are appreciated by many, many people not just in the US but in other countries as well. This film will have you and others in discussion for some time after you see it.
Judging from this first account, Moore’s fans are responding with great fervor to “Captain Mike Across America”. This fan reaction is a complete 180 turn from the critical reaction, which was resoundingly negative. Several questions emerge now. Is this an isolated report or will more positive fan reactions to “Captain Mike” start popping up? If Moore’s fans do indeed love this new film, why did critics have such a different reaction? What are the critics seeing that Moore’s fans are not? And, perhaps most intriguingly, whose opinion will Moore dwell on the most - the fans or the critics?
Only time will tell, and I will be very curious to see how this continues to play out.
A new fan review has just emerged on the web written by a Moore fan from the TIFF festival. The reviewer saw the second public screening of “Captain Mike Across America"… and his reaction was decidedly different from the above review:
I’m not saying anything against Moore’s tactics, but I’m here to review his movie and this movie is just-not-needed. This is Michael Moore’s little love letter to himself. He depicts himself as a hero, standing up on the stage and having us watch him rally these people. And Moore seems to get off having himself large on the screen-even though in his intro he told us how sorry he was for us to be looking at him on a giant screen as he isn’t easy on the eye. Moore seemed to only want to make this to show us how popular he is and how controversial and how he is leading a revolt.Maybe if somebody else made the movie about the tour instead of Moore forcing his vast inspiration on us, I may feel differently. But its still a pointless effort. I like Moore’s films, except “Fahrenheit 9/11, really”, but with “Captain Mike Across America” he is at the peak of his self-indulgent and narcissitic ways. Did he really need to make an entire film about the 2004 elections again? Was there any need for this at all? Maybe if he tookt he footage and cut a twenty minute short on a future DVD of “Fahrenheit 9/11"-which I have a feeling may come out either when “Sicko” comes out on DVD, or right before the 2008 elections.
After the film Moore did a Q&A for the packed audience. Oh I’m sorry, did I say Q&A? What I really should have said was people standing up and saying how much they admire Moore and how his films will change the world without asking anything question, while Moore looked bashful on the stage. No questions. . . no answers. . . nothing. Just a waste of my time. And when the cameraman and editor of the film came on stage, the moderator did ask (because its his job) what the originally intention for this film was. The editor said “When I shot this, we never thought we would make a movie, Michael just wanted to get the tour on film. And then we had this footage and we were wondering what we should do with it.” What I heard as “Fahrenheit 9/11 made over 100 million dollars at the box office, and we have this footage that could probably also make that much money.” “Captain Mike Across America” is really just a self-indulgent little film that is just not needed to see on the big screen. Maybe on TV. . . maybe. Even though the festival screening was like I was at a political rally-and I heard a few anti-American comments by some of the forever Canadian residents, which Moore never really seemed to deny-I sense that Moore fans will see that this is a pointless work. If he wanted to make another documentary so soon he should go in the field instead of releasing dead footage for something that is not needed to see. Come on, the elections are coming up in a year. Do we really need to go back in the past?
Again… WOW. Another scathing review of this movie, but this time by a fan rather than a critic. Will this love-it-or-hate-it trend continue? Stay tuned....
Yet more bad reviews for “Captain Mike Across America” rolled in this morning. I can honestly say I haven’t seen a single good - or even a relatively neutral - review of this movie yet. Here are two more excepts from reviews for your perusal below the cut, with the second one being particularly lengthy and scathing.
Captain Mike Across America is an interesting proposition: Michael Moore documents his tour across America in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential elections; a tour that notably failed to turn the tide of the election against George Bush. As Moore is more skilled in creating passionate (if flawed) polemics than he is at documentary film-making, someone else should have taken the reins. In Moore’s hands, this is a weird, confusingly-edited rush between states with occasional musical interludes (it’s nice to hear the Finland’s national anthem) that leaves you wondering: “Where on earth is this going?” The answer, of course, is nowhere (Kerry was a lame duck) and Moore’s glib explanation is unintentionally dispiriting. 1/5
Michael Moore’s new documentary opens with a title card explaining that we’re in Tallahassee, Florida the night before the 2004 election and immediately I thought: Uh, yeah—I think I recall how this one turned out. Chronicling Moore’s 2004 Slacker Uprising Tour—a get-out-the-vote series of speaking engagements in 20 ‘Battleground’ States—Captain Mike Across America is easily Moore’s weakest film, a self-congratulatory mess that has nothing to say about the American political process and tells you everything you need to know about the numbing cult of personality that’s sprung up around Moore. It’s not so bad that there’s a cult of personality around Moore—as I’ve said of Moore before, some Americans are so desperate for someone to speak truth to power that they’ll settle for someone saying anything to it. What’s bad is that Moore seems to be buying into his own myth, now, and here that seems both narcissistic and futile.
Moore wants to keep old grudges alive—anger about the ‘Swift Boat’ ads that ran against Kerry, anger about the decision to go to war in Iraq, anger about the 2000 election Supreme Court decision that ended Al Gore’s presidential ambitions. It’s like watching a demented cheerleader scream their lungs out over a game that was lost years ago—and was rigged in the first place. And yes, I just compared the American electoral process to a rigged game…
The Weinstein Company is distributing Captain Mike Across America, and while I rarely talk about business and distribution decisions in reviews, I do have to say this: Whatever they paid, they got taken. The film feels more like a home movie, shot on DV by Moore’s crew during the tour and incorporating newsclips obviously ripped from Tivo (they have that low-rez blur to them). And the tour itself earned speaker’s fees for Moore; his controversial appearance at Utah Valley State College alone netted him $50,000, and it was one of 62 stops. (Some of which, I’m sure, were pro bono, but still.) Captain Mike Across America couldn’t have cost very much to make—a pocket-lining vanity project on par with Bill Clinton’s gigantic, say-nothing autobiography or John McCain’s ghostwritten profiles in courage.
And it’s worth even less to watch. Moore used to be engaging because he spoke up in the face of power and he actually had something to say. But with Captain Mike Across America, he’s saying nothing, or at least nothing we haven’t heard from him before: I am angry. You should vote. I dislike George Bush. I am angry. Recently—with Bowling for Columbine, Sicko and even to a certain degree Fahrenheit 9/11-- Moore’s been making engaging, informative, opinionated and intriguing films from a passionate point of view; Captain Mike Across America is an information-free, narcissistic and self-congratulatory high-pitched whine from a sore loser.
Again… WOW. I can hardly believe my eyes at some of these reviews. It seems I’m not the only person who’s wondering why Moore has released this film and what he’s hoping to gain out of it. Again, I do believe it’s too early to call this one, but it seems that “Captain Mike Across America” is destined to be Moore’s first huge flop. This, of course, begs another question from me. If this film does truly turn out to be the cinematic flop it seems to be, how will Moore handle such a harsh rejection of his work?
Well, the reviews have started pouring in for Moore’s latest opus “Captain Mike Across America”, and so far the tone has been unanimous in nature. Unanimously harsh, anyway.
Yesterday afternoon, I opted for the Moore, which, as you’d surmise if you read a synopsis, is not actually a film. Rather, it’s just reassembled footage from his 2004 Slacker Uprising tour, during which he toured colleges in swing states with celebrities (Eddie Vedder! Um, Roseanne Barr!) and tried to get out the vote for Kerry.
And we all know how that turned out. Captain Mike Across America doesn’t have anything new to say about the 2004 election; it doesn’t even have any new footage. It’s almost entirely videotaped speeches and interviews with students—some of them already featured in docs about Moore, like Manufacturing Dissent and This Divided State. Why did Moore feel that this material needed to be so tediously regurgitated? So he can show off the moment when one student gave him his uncle’s Purple Heart? (”He’d have wanted you to have it.”) Rather than inspiring his audience to action, Captain Mike does little other than call attention to the arrogance of the man who made it.
One of the weirdest records of the ‘70s was “Having Fun With Elvis On Stage,” which consisted wholly of spliced-together patter from the King’s live shows, a full two sides of Elvis repeatedly muttering “Thank you very much!” and asking for a drink of water. “Captain Mike Across America” is Michael Moore’s “Having Fun With Elvis On Stage.” I’m not sure exactly why this movie exists, although in a twisted way, maybe it’s somewhat admirable: It seems that Moore has finally made a 102-minute commercial for himself, which possibly has been his dream all along.
I saw “Captain Mike Across America” at a press screening here on Thursday night, at the end of the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival. The screening was held in a theater with a capacity of about 580. I arrived very early, fearing the thing might be crowded—but I’d be surprised if there were 100 people there, maybe even as few as 50. Is Moore losing some of his magic with the festival-going press, which he could always count on for a reasonable amount of support, or at least some copy? I could almost hear tumbleweeds blowing through that theater; that could be partly because the screening began at 10:15 p.m., by which time any moviegoer’s energy level might be a little low. Or could it be that Moore’s dud logic and relentless self-congratulation are finally starting to grind down even those who essentially agree with his politics.
This story is intercut with news footage, and performances from special guest musicians and comedians. This is where the film often goes off track, trying to be something it clearly isn’t. It’s great to show the many special guests who appeared on the tour to support the cause, but to stop the story for a musical number is to sabotage plot and story for the sake of spectacle (and mostly b-rate spectacle at that). Special guests include Eddy Vedder, Steve Earl, REM, Joan Baez, Viggo Mortensen and Rosanne Barr. Some of them are entertaining, most are not. And I could have done without one sequence where Moore is dancing off stage.
In the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Michael Moore embarked on a 60-college tour with speeches and musical guests (I hope someone YouTubes Eddie Vedder’s gorgeously tender cover of Cat Stevens) to motivate the dormitory dwellers into the voting booths. Yet despite all the time Moore spends onscreen, Captain Mike Across America comes off as oddly impersonal documentary. Moments of drama are all too brief (like Republicans suing him for allegedly bribing students with instant ramen and underwear) and the film is dispassionately shot from the audience’s perspective. Considering how much manpower it must’ve taken to organize the tour and how it ultimately failed to turn the presidential tide, it’s a disappointment there’s no real behind-the-scenes or candid response footage from Moore. We’ve gotten used to him as an approachable humanist after Sicko, but here he insists on remaining a distant icon.
Ostensibly chronicling his failed Slacker Uprising Tour - the traveling get-out-the-vote roadshow he embarked upon prior to the 2004 presidential elections with the express intent of bringing down President Bush, Captain Mike Across America is actually about nothing more than servicing Moore’s own enormous ego. A ninety seven minute continuous wank job the film is a smug and self congratulating attempt at self-canonization. It is intellectually hollow, shallow as a puddle, and has nothing to say about anything of any lasting importance to anyone other than Moore himself…
Now, successful or not, the tour could have - and SHOULD have, dammit - provided an excellent launch pad to enter discussion on any number of important issues. A study at social resistance? Could have done that. A primer on grass roots activism? Could have done that. A dissection of a badly flawed electoral system? Could have done that. An ass kicking diatribe against rampant voter apathy? Could have done that. Moore does none of these things. Absolutely none of them. Shockingly for a film supposedly chronicling a series of political rallies, Moore can’t even find the time to present the on-stage content of those rallies as anything beyond a handful of brief sound bites. What he does find time for though, and lots of it, is shot after shot after shot of himself entering packed out arenas to thunderous applause, fans requesting hugs as though he were the lost fifth Beatle, a man giving him a relative’s world war two Bronze Star, and every word of praise that the rock stars and celebrities who joined him on tour had to send his way - Joan Baez gives a particularly lengthy ode to Michael - while cutting out just about anything of substance any of them may have said from the stage. By my count the film opens with a solid twenty minutes - nearly a quarter of the total run time! - of this sort of hollow self promotion before making even a half hearted attempt at even raising any sort of larger issue.
You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t talk about any issues raised by the film, it’s just that there aren’t any. Moore says nothing in this film beyond the fact that there is a large faction of people out there who like him rather a lot and that he agrees with them wholeheartedly. Mike? You’re better than this. And you’d better remember it before all of those adoring people forget why they cared about anything you had to say in the first place.
I must admit I’m rather speechless. I have never seen such uniformly harsh reviews of Moore’s work, particular from those who begin their reviews by stressing they are indeed Moore fans. Of course we’ll have to wait for further reviews to make a more accurate judgment call, but I think it may be safe to assume at this stage that “Captain Mike Across America” is a flop. All of this, of course, make me beg the questions once again… why on earth did Moore release this film? What did he hope to gain from it? Time will only tell.
In the comments to this thread, DVDGuy posted a link to a review of Moore’s new ego stroke, Captain Mike’s Giant Ego Trip And Exploration Of Paranoia And Trumped-Up Fluffery (I may have the name a bit wrong, not sure). In that review, Todd Brown, a self-confessed Moore fan, has a lot to say, including this:
Mike? You’re better than this. And you’d better remember it before all of those adoring people forget why they cared about anything you had to say in the first place.
Todd? I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but no. No, he’s not better than this. And to make matters worse, he never has been. I too used to be a fan and thought Mike was fighting the good fight. One day I woke up and realized that he was, indeed, fighting a great fight, only it was one designed to bolster his ego, cater to his paranoia and line his pockets.
Everyone should go check out Todd Brown’s review. It’s very much something I could have written about five minutes after I saw Bowling For Columbine.
A set of seven new photos from Michael Moore’s new movie “Captain Mike Across America” have been released. Upon looking at the stills, nothing seemed remarkable to me about them. However, this small caption from the article suddenly caught my eye:
The photos look like the film will surprise many people who were expecting something completely different. The film seems like it was aimed at the Bush supporters who crashed the 2004 tour.
This of course made me take a second look at the batch of photos and, sure enough, almost all of them were focused on the Bush supporters outside the rallies rather than Moore and the rally attendees themselves. Ummm… why? I cannot imagine what message Moore is trying to send with this movie or what goal he is hoping to accomplish. I for one will be interested to see how this plays out when the movie finally sees a release.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore will be up to his old tricks at the Toronto film festival, which helped launch his controversial career with Roger & Me. Moore’s latest political doc, Captain Mike Across America, has been added to the sprawling Special Presentations program.
Moore, who has been openly contemptuous of U.S. President George W. Bush for years, is seen on the 2004 presidential election campaign following the candidates in what he called the Slacker Uprising Tour. Among Moore’s “slacker” pals were Roseanne Barr, Eddie Vedder, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Earl and Joan Baez.
I’m assuming this the “sequel” to Fahrenheit 9/11 Moore shot while on the Slacker Uprising Tour but I haven’t been able to find anything about the film on Moore’s site. I find it rather odd Moore hasn’t does any substantial publicity for this project… curious. Anyone know more about this new film?
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